War on the Internet: The Pirate Bay Denied Their Day In Supreme Court

In what can only be described as an all-out declaration of war with the Internet, the Swedish Supreme Court has denied the final hearing in the trial of the original The Pirate Bay operators. This means that the Appeals Court verdict stands, unless appealed to the European Court of Justice.

This case and trial was political from day one. The astounding arrogance displayed by the establishment showed that it was nothing but theater; there was never a shred of justice involved, only a hellbent desire from the entire establishment to show who’s boss once and for all.

Let’s recap:

In a country where police is constantly in short supply and cases with the derogatory label everyday violence are routinely dropped, fifty (!) police raided a server hall and took all (!) servers — over 150 of them. Many entrepreneurs went out of business. The copyright monopoly lobby gleefully commented in media with “you have to be aware who your neighbor in the server hall is, or face the consequences” in the best and worst of mafia style.

In the raid, over a dozen violations of the constitution were committed; among others, the legal counsel of The Pirate Bay gets his DNA permanently registered with the State, and a constitutionally protected publisher is shut down (though restored a few days later).

The investigation was led by an openly bribed policeman, Jim Keyzer, who was bribed with a job with Warner Brothers, one of the plaintiffs (!) for six months and then went back to the police force.

In the District Court, the corrupt judge Tomas Norström was in the same interest group as the plaintiffs – the Swedish Association For Copyright – which argues politically against the defendants. That means he was meeting the copyright monopoly lobby regularly and on a personal basis, and sharing a personal interest in a guilty verdict. He was completely nonplussed as to the later accusations of bias and corruption, and was later cleared of such charges of bias, by a person in the Appeals Court who was also a member of the same interest group. Therefore, the District Court verdict was not declared a mistrial.

In the middle of everything, the unrelated Carl Lundström is dragged in as a defendant, a person who has had absolutely nothing to do with The Pirate Bay but who happens to know the people involved and also own a lot of money. The verdict determines damages to pretty much all of Lundström’s fortune, to be paid “in solidarity” – a legal term meaning that the person with the money pays, and the defendants get to sort it out between themselves later. This was a design just to rob one person of their fortune and scare everybody away from even talking to The Pirate Bay. (Of course, it didn’t work, but it shows the arrogance.)

The negotiations in the Appeals Court are placed just days after the 2010 General Elections, instead of before as expected, because that’s “the only days that the plaintiffs were able to attend the hearings”. If placed before the elections, The Pirate Bay trial had been an election issue and received tons of attention. The Appeals Court defends this decision as “standard procedure”. Nobody is surprised.

On the negotiations in the Appeals Court, a sign in the doorway showing today’s trials showed just how misplaced the entire theater was. The screen listed trials for aggravated assault, murder, rape, armed robbery… and in the middle of it all, there was an “aiding and abetting copyright violations”.

The judge in the Appeals Court had also been a member of the Swedish Association for Copyright, but “wasn’t any longer”. The damages were raised substantially in the Appeals Court and the prison sentences lowered somewhat, but nobody really cared about the Appeals Court negotiations, as the coming Supreme Court negotiations would be where the final and interesting battle would stand.

And so today, we are notified that the final battle has been cancelled, as the case isn’t interesting enough, which is such an outright display of arrogance from the establishment that it’s mind-boggling. They didn’t even care to consult the European Court of Justice on the immunity of a middleman. So while everybody was looking the other way, this is essentially a “haha, did you really think we’d allow this?”.

This complete arrogance from the establishment, essentially saying “we don’t give a fuck about justice or freedom of speech, we can do whatever we want and get away with it, and we like to show off that ability”, is nothing less than a declaration of war with the entire internet.

Today, the monopolist lobby is showing off in Swedish oldmedia, while also threatening Internet Service Providers that don’t bend to their will. This is not just unacceptable; this is an all-out declaration of war.

(As a side note, the Swedish Supreme Court is leaking like a sieve. I was fairly certain this would be coming, days in advance. Yet another sign of arrogance: they didn’t even care to guard the normal secrets of process of law.)

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

Jens

February 1, 2012

There is no justice in Sweden, it’s all a sad joke. Money decide who is going to jail and who is not.

one could argue that this is just taking the “decentralised” idea to the next logical step, decentralising decentralised networks.

PiratGurra

February 1, 2012

I agree. Decentralization will be the key.

But there is one last layer which we may not have control over. The hardware layer. If the companies producing the hardware creates it to spy on you, how do you defend against that? You’ll need to figure out which hardware companies you can trust. The software can be open source and copied easily, but to have trusted hardware… Basically you would need your own factory..?

Scary Devil Monastery

February 1, 2012

That, fortunately, has proven inefficient – check China’s “Green Dam” project. Basically, manufacturing hardware with a hardwired backdoor proved to be unfeasible as any company which attempted so could not sell any machines.

Sony went the furthest with this when they designed the PS3. And we all know how that went, when they had a head-on-head encounter with the golden rule of security. And went down hard.

Before you can establish backdoored hardware as a standard you need a society even more draconian than either China or the old SSSR. I’m not too worried on that account.

PiratGurra

February 2, 2012

Yes that is true. Very many people will probably go to great lengths to break security and encryption of such hardware. We already know how many citizens globally who willingly spend lots of time to break DRM and other obstacles and nuisances in their purchased hardware.

But maybe these interests are well enough off with the selective information gathering from a few people of interest..? Maybe they will have to make do with that anyway.

Autolykos

February 1, 2012

Ugly words like “kangaroo court” and “mock trial” are wandering around in my mind right now – I wonder why.
Now this is a behavior one would expect in China and be outraged about in Russia, but Sweden? Seriously? Are there any democracies left (except for maybe Switzerland and Norway)?

Ally

February 1, 2012

Case closed, Seems to me and most people knowledgable in Swedish law that justice have been served. Admittedly though the sentences against the Piratebay conspirators were far too mild

Rick Falkvinge

February 1, 2012

Are you deliberately trying to provoke?

Ally

February 1, 2012

Are you?

Oldtimer

February 1, 2012

You, Sir, are a complete moron. With all due respect, of course.

Ally

February 1, 2012

Oldtimer quite an unnecessary remark. Do you think that everybody has to think like you to not be a moron? I guess even you can figure out the correct answer to that.

Oldtimer

February 1, 2012

I’m merely pointing out the obvious. You totally ignore the facts of the case and post purposely inflammatory nonsense. It has nothing to be whether we think alike or not. Different thoughts should lead to arguments and debate. Your behaviour is simply moronic.

I’ve had my differences with Oldtimer over politics over the years I’ve known him, but here, he is absolutely correct.

PiratGurra

February 1, 2012

It’s funny you think this will have any impact at all in practice. Like a huge masquerade. I wonder how many tens if not hundreds of such trials in other countries you would need to shut down TPB everywhere. And that’s just one of all torrent trackers in the world.

You have no chance against decentralized file sharing. Give it up already.

Please tell me there will be massive protests or some such in Sweden as a result of this?

I don’t even know what to say… such a hopeless display by a supposedly democratic country is just… horrible. I can’t even think of anything else to say on it–you pretty much summed up the failure after failure of justice. Horrible. Just horrible.

Rick Falkvinge

February 1, 2012

Alas, everybody who would normally be rallying for the protests are currently galvanizing against ACTA. I would find it hard to hold two rallies for unrelated (?) items, especially at this time of year – you can’t stand still more than a couple of minutes before getting frozen and cold.

If the huge ACTA protests hadn’t been coming up, I would be organizing firebrand speech rallies already.

Oh right, too much bad crap happening already. Well, on the upside (not really) if the gov. does end up trying to throw them in prison (which is not actually likely, right?) perhaps there will be time for a show of support then…

Rickard

February 1, 2012

It dawned on me during the recent focus on ACTA and the response being that it is already covered by Swedish law, that this implied this result from the Pirate Bay trial, i.e., the Swedish Department of Justice needed this case to be closed to further on that ACTA is no problem as it is already covered.

Everyone needs to get a cheap computer, install a Tor node and a Freenet node on it and run it 24/7. The initial cost is a couple of hundred euros (unless you already have an old computer laying around somewhere), the bandwidth and electricity is maybe a couple of tens of euros per month (unless you already have a home internet connection with excess bandwidth). The more people do that, the faster these anonymous networks will be and the more people will use it.

Oldtimer

February 1, 2012

The verdict is in – Sweden is no longer a democracy. The fourth box has been opened.

It’s not to pressure them to go our way, it’s a hard shove to get them out of the way. It would be blackmail if we offered to stand down if they backed down, but no such offer has been made, and the reason is simple:

There can be no peaceful co-existence between free and unfree culture models. There can only be war until only one is left standing.

Ally

February 2, 2012

I’m sorry Anders but you seem to be really lost and quite confused. Hope you’ll find your way back to reality soon.

So, anyone who feels like going to the police with similar accusations against other, similar services, such as Google and Bing? Heck, Google even provides copies of the content from their own servers (look at the “cached” link in the search results). It would be nice to see the copyright mafia go up against someone with next to unlimited economical resources in court, especially as the justice system seems to work for the highest bidder.

johan

February 1, 2012

Go for it!

Peach Cobbler

February 2, 2012

Google and Bing aren’t similar services to TPB. Google & Bing actually try to do business the legal way and they don’t mock the copyrightholders.

* Both are run for profit, huge profits.
* They both almost exclusively provide links to copyrighted material, while such material is only a small part of the content of TPB (I made a random sample and found the percentage of copyrighted files on TPB to be around 15-20%). Remember, anything on a web site which is not explicitly under an open license is protected by copyright, and, as the TPB verdict shows, apparently it’s illegal to link to copyrighted material on other servers.
* Google not only serves links, they also provide copies of said copyrighted material from their own servers, without the approval of the copyright holder. Try the “cached” link…
* TPB is just a bulletin board with a search engine. It does not generate or add content, it’s all done by the users (and, as such, the responsibility lies with the users who post the content). Google and Bing, on the other hand, add their content themselves, and thus are fully responsible for the linking to copyrighted material.

So, yes, Google and Bing are not the same as TPB. They are much, much worse.

Peach Cobbler

February 3, 2012

Anders you’re really struggling to make a case of your confused thoughts in this matter but yet you fail miserable.

Anona

February 1, 2012

In one way it does seem nice, now that the big corporations look like bullies, this would get more people not to acknowledge content which do not allow you to share. This could(should) be the beginning of end of copyright works, and entertainment moving towards copyleft/creative commons like license.

Sent from my tor client.

Anon

February 1, 2012

Ally is a fail troll.

Megalodon

February 1, 2012

Sweden is no longer a democracy, and therefor can’t be treated as such. Peaceful protests will be invain, we have to resort to the fourth box.

Peach Cobbler

February 2, 2012

Of course Sweden is a democracy. TPB in several ways did not follow Swedish democratical laws so of course the verdict against the founders was just and democratic.

piratgurra

February 3, 2012

Lol, that’s just absurd.. A bribed police man, “ministerstyre” and denial to be tried at highest court level when no previous case has been tried before… That’s just.. well, people won’t believe you. 😉

Peach Cobbler

February 3, 2012

You mean Piratepeople won’t believe me. But then again piratepeople are generally ONLY really interested in downloading stuff for free.

Ikke

February 1, 2012

No western democracy was ever a democracy, geez. It’s just that information flow has breached the secrecy in which the elite could historically operate. Look at it this way: the dirt that been piling up ever since the foundation of Western democracy suddenly gets flushed out into the sunlight with modern information tech. Now we know what we are dealing with we can finally fix shit.

piratgurra

February 3, 2012

For as long as there was centralized systems, centralised power, centralised “mass media”, it was somewhat possible to keep “democracy” an illusion for the people – even though that may not have been the case.

This is a sad and yet historic day! It certainly signifies war and shows clearly that the rubicon has been crossed, democracy is dead, and only we can raise it once again from it’s grave. The internets are quickly erasing national boundaries and people are turning their affinity to online communities who actually protect their interests. We must build new nations, build new services, start new religions and never give up the fight. We are the only ones standing in the way of a dystopian totalitarian nightmare quickly approaching. We are at the the gates of Moordor.

Poled Mole

February 2, 2012

Your link to the pirate bay does not work anymore (from Austria), must have been in the last few minutes because I was able to access the site before.

Twitter suggests other countries are having difficulties accessing TPB as well.

What does this article tell us about Julian Assange’s chances for a fair trial in Sweden should it come to that?

Rick Falkvinge

February 2, 2012

Quite an astute observation.

My experience with Swedish authorities is that they do whatever they damn well please, and if caught red handed breaking the law, at best, a committee is commissioned to investigate what happened, which is never heard from again.

What’s good about the net is that this corruption has been dragged into the sunlight.

Peach Cobbler

February 3, 2012

“My experience with Swedish authorities is that they do whatever they damn well please, and if caught red handed breaking the law, at best, a committee is commissioned to investigate what happened, which is never heard from again.”

Once again Rick is making up fairytales the commitees and thir findings are defintively heard frpm in papers tv and on the net.

piratgurra

February 3, 2012

Nope, that’s just about it. That’s how most “disasters” or incidents are actually handled. There is a really big need for transparency in politics in Sweden (well, isn’t there everywhere!?).

Well, that has really never even been a question. Should Assange have to stand trial here, he’s screwed, regardless of laws, facts and reality. The only reality that would be considered is what Big Brother West wants (much like the TPB trial).

Byte

February 3, 2012

Don’t forget the “political way”, first make sure you vote (for the right party of course) in general and European elections. Second, already start actively promoting alternatives to “hiding” among friends, colleagues and family. Build some interest in the subject. Explain the importance. Explain that, in order to get change, you sometimes have to do something radical like voting for a (as of yet) small party. Unfortunately, I don’t live in a democracy (Canada), but for those that live in a country with proportional representation, this actually works. It’s like a snowball, it’s still high up on the mountain where only few people can see it and small in size, but once it starts rolling down, it both grows in size and becomes more visible. Getting it to roll down is going to be the hard part, but that didn’t stop “us” from going to the Moon.

Meta

All original text on this site is under a Creative Commons Zero license ("public domain"). That includes any comments you submit. Syndicated articles that were first published elsewhere (clearly marked as such) are under the original license, typically a very permissive Creative Commons. Powered by Probewise.